to South African Family History Research.
By
Sharon Warr
So you want to be a Genie?
Welcome to South African Genealogy. Here you are, taking your first baby steps to
finding out how to research your Family Tree and just so that we get our
terminology right, people like us are called genealogists or family historians
but for our purposes, we are going to stick to Genie for short.
Your reasons for embarking on this mission might differ
greatly to mine but I can assure you that once you start you will want to
continue, even if the only thing you wanted in the first place was an Ancestral Visa or to prove distant kinship to the Duke of Edinburgh.
Right from the outset I must warn you that it won’t be a
walk in the park. In fact you will have to tone up those
mental muscles and brush up on your sleuthing powers to be able to sidestep the
many obstacles you will encounter along the way. Having said that, I must also say that you are in for a lot
of fun and a roller coaster ride through history that will leave you gasping for
breath. So get out that notebook, sharpen your pencil and let’s take the first
steps together.
Where to start?
Contrary to everything your parents and teachers ever
taught you, you do not start at the beginning! Yep, you read that
correctly- never ever start at the beginning or, more specifically, never
start from the earliest ancestor you can find!! You start at the end,
with the last little twig on your family tree, YOURSELF.
The advantage of being stone last for a change is that you can work backwards from the known to the unknown. You know the names of your parents – there, you’ve already gone back one generation! You will also probably know the names of your grandparents and so on. With this in mind we are now going to do a little artwork. (This is where the notebook and sharpened pencil I warned you about earlier comes in handy). You are going to draw your first rough family tree.
Like this:
(Oupa
and Ouma are the Afrikaans equivalent of Grandpa and Grandma.)
You carry on filling in names, using this format - remembering
to include
maiden names, dates of birth, marriage and death, where known, until you run out
of them. It doesn’t matter if you have a few dates wrong here and there. If
you are not quite sure when Grandpa and Grandma got married or when one of them
‘crossed over’ – no sweat, you can find that out later. Just get it down
on paper. Drawing a rough tree gives you
perspective and it is easier to see who’s who in the zoo.
The Thin Red Line
A really tough decision will present itself at this stage of the proceedings. Now is the time to choose which line you want to research first. Will it be Dad’s side of the family or Mom’s and even tougher still - will it be Dad’s paternal line (Dad's Dad) or maternal line (Dad's Mom)? It is important to make this choice and not rush headlong into researching everything at once. You will only get bogged down and downright confused. As you go along you will come across things that pertain to the other lines and it is important to jot down your sources, but don’t get sidetracked. (me with my big mouth - this is one of the hardest things about genealogy for me. It's just too tempting.)
Once you have got your framework down, you are ready to
progress to the next stage and this is a really fun part of Genie research
because you get to go on a treasure hunt.
The X Files
You know that feeling when you go through the pockets of a
seldom worn jacket and you find a wad of money you’d forgotten there? Well,
the feeling is the same when you start going through old letters and photographs
(the ones that your ancestors forgot to write on and you could now just die of
frustration for wanting to know who the people in the photos are !!!!). Then
there’s the old biscuit tin with family memorabilia in it like those old Union
Castle ship’s tickets and menus, the wedding invitations and school reports. A
diary would be like finding the Rosetta Stone, the ultimate treasure trove of information
on your family – names, places, dates, juicy scandal…but I digress. This is the
stuff Genies' dreams are made of. All these goodies contain valuable clues about
your ancestors – where they went to school, whether they were in the armed
forces, where they traveled, who their friends were and the things that were
important to them. This is the stuff that puts them in their context in history
and breathes life back into the bare bones of genealogical data. So go and look
in the attic or in that old suitcase at the top of your cupboard and sift
through the remnants of your ancestors' lives. Be careful to preserve the
information in context. Don’t mix up your material or get photos muddled up
with family members from other branches of your tree. If a photo isn’t marked,
how do you know whether it's from your Dad’s side of the family or Mom’s.
So keep them together, as you found them, perhaps in envelopes, and label where you got it from etc.
Later on we’ll talk more about keeping track of what you have done.
Driving (to) Miss Daisy
Whether you have a suitcase or a biscuit tin full of goodies
or not, you will now have to do a bit of spit and polish on your diplomatic skills. Sooner or later you are
going to have to approach living members of your family whom you have possibly
not seen in years. You need to flip through that old address book and start
calling some of them and don’t be offended if at first they don’t know who
you are or the first thing they say is “Oh my Gosh – who died?”.
Never mind too that there might be the small matter of the feud between
your Mother and her distant cousins – it isn’t your feud after all. You must
contact them and find out if they are willing to share information with you.
They might have letters, photographs and maybe that diary we spoke of. All this
can add info to your research efforts. Nine times out of ten they will only be
too happy to share juicy tidbits with you and enjoy a sympathetic ear for an
afternoon over tea and cucumber sandwiches. Remember to take notes. Relying on
memory has its hazards and you will only kick yourself when you are hovering
over the telephone, embarrassed because you have to ask for the information
again.
Making an audio recording of an interview is an ideal way of capturing information. This is the ultimate 'note taking' exercise and is a wonderful way of capturing subtle inflections in the way Great Uncle Percy relates his life story. But I digress (again). See Oral History Recording for Beginners - but not now...read on.
The purpose of all of this is to save you a lot of time and
effort. Living relatives might have the very things you are looking for, namely
birth or marriage certificates, details of military service, newspaper cuttings
or death notices and they will often have personal background information on the individuals
you are researching.
A word of warning here. In your enthusiasm to discover
things, remember that your relatives (and many of those who remember long dead
ancestors will probably be elderly) must be treated with the utmost
respect and consideration. After all, you are invading their lives, forcing them
to dredge up the past and making demands on them like “can I borrow these
priceless photos to scan, Great Aunt?” when they haven’t a clue what
scanning is. You tend to confuse and upset them and they might just banish you
from their threshold. If they do not want to discuss certain things, leave it. Respect their privacy - it might be too upsetting or painful
to recall.
Things your Mother (or Grandmother) never told you.
If you are not prepared to be shocked, you might as well
stop researching right now. I have done extensive research on behalf of many
families and ALL of them have some kind of rattling going on in the closet. Some
skeletons rattle louder than others but believe me every family has one.
You can’t change the past. You can’t even ignore it because sooner or later
someone will notice something and the closet door will begin to creak open. Once
you start doing your forensic detective analysis of dates and people you often
uncover things that make your eyebrows rise a notch or two. (they did things
like that in 1865????). Maybe it is a child out of wedlock or a messy divorce or
even a criminal record! Whatever it is, one thing’s for certain, the black
sheep add contrast to the genealogical landscape and somehow things would be a
bit boring without them.
Armed with this knowledge, just remember that some of your
living relatives might still be ‘covering up' certain indiscretions of the
past and your evaluation of their version of the past must take this into
account. Verify, verify, verify – which brings us to the next scenario.
Great Grandpa’s Shenanigans
Picture the scene...Great Grandpa was a Boer War hero. He was an officer in the
army and was present at the Battle of Spioenkop and was personal escort to Lord
Roberts when he ...blah blah blah. Sounds great hey? My personal experience is,
that in that whole scenario, there might be one tiny grain of truth, but
that little grain often grows with the telling and Great Grandpa eventually ends up
becoming this legendary, much decorated Boer War figure whose exploits will
inspire films and documentaries. Be prepared to be disappointed with the family
‘legends’. The truth is often much more modest. Great Grandpa might well have
been in the army and in the Boer War but he might have been a cook with
the rank of Private and probably served with a regiment that was no where near Spioenkop.
He probably also only clapped eyes on Lord Roberts whilst that august personage was riding through
the field kitchen precincts. Don’t be disappointed – these are YOUR
ancestors. You are where you are because of the choices they made and the
experiences they had, however modest those might have been. Embrace them.
Good
Will Hunting
I bet you never thought that looking at Death Notices and
Wills would be fun. Try explaining this to a non-Genie and their expression
changes to one of mild alarm. It is a bit off beat but these documents
are the cornerstone of any genealogical research in South Africa and without
them you would be hard-pressed to find concrete evidence of who the deceased’s
parents were or how many children they had. This is going to be your next step
– finding those Death Notices. Click
here to see an example.
Why Death Notices?
The single most informative
document in South African Genealogical research is the Death Notice, not to be
confused with a death certificate, which is normally supplied by a medical
practitioner and gives the cause of death along with some personal information.
The Death Notice on the other hand, is a document which is usually filled in by a close
relative such as the surviving spouse or one of the children and, in most cases,
will give details of where the deceased was born, who the parents were, where and who they married,
the names of all their children and whether they were majors or minors at the time of
death, how old the deceased was at time of death, the deceased’s occupation,
whether they left a will and whether they had moveable and/or immoveable property.
A veritable treasure trove. This is where you need to concentrate your initial research.
Where do you find Death Notices?
Death Notices can either be found at the various National
Archives repositories around the country or at the Master of the High Court
(also known as the Master’s
Office) depending on the date that the deceased estate file was filed. In Cape
Town for example, all estate files prior to 1959 are housed at the Cape Town Archives
in Roeland Street and 1959 to present day are at the Master’s Office. The other repositories have
different date ranges for this and it would be wise to find out what these are
before visiting.
National Archives
There are six main repositories
in the major centres in South Africa: Cape Town (Western Cape), Pretoria
(Transvaal or Gauteng), Pietermaritzburg (KwaZuluNatal), Durban (KwaZuluNatal), Port Elizabeth (Eastern
Cape) and Bloemfontein (Free State). Each repository is responsible for
archiving all documentation relating to the province in which it is situated.
Before you throw your hands in the air wondering how on earth you are going to
find out which repository to search, there is light at the end of the tunnel and
it is not a train coming. The National Archives has a free online database,
which you can search to see whether there is any material on your ancestors. You can even visit the Archives in your area and use their computers to surf the
database for free. The database is
called NAAIRS
- rhymes with stairs (National Automated Archival Information Retrieval
System – try saying that after your second glass of sherry). The on-line
address is: www.national.archives.gov.za/naairs.htm
(but don’t go there yet – read on before you jump in boots and all).
NAAIRS helps you to find material and to identify the repository in which
it is housed. Just when you thought
you could not get luckier than this I must warn you that the content of the
document is NOT viewable online but a short description of it is provided,
together with the relevant dates and reference numbers – it looks like this:
National
Archives of South Africa (NASA)
In this example the Depot or
Archive repository is KAB or Cape Town. The source or archive series is MOOC or
Master's Office/Orphan Chamber – it covers the period 1877 which is probably the
year in which Jasper Antonie Ley’s estate file was lodged.
Once you have found your document
you can request assistance from the staff at the repository itself by quoting the reference
number or acquire the services of a private researcher. Just follow the links on
their website.
Remember that the National
Archives has a wealth of material of which Death Notices are only a part. Later
on when you are ready to flesh out the history of your ancestors you can broaden
your search of NAAIRS to include other aspects such as what property they might
have owned or what misdemeanours they committed. (Black sheep are well
represented.)
Simple record keeping
Whenever I go through the
earliest research of my own family tree, I could break out the sackcloth and
ashes and weep at my poor record keeping. So ecstatic was I at finding
information that I often omitted to write down properly where I had found
it. The consequence of my stupidity was that a lot of that research had to be
done again. Picture someone finding a nugget of gold in the desert. He rushes
off to the nearest town to stake his claim and then discovers that he hasn’t
got a clue how to explain where his ‘claim’ might be. He’d forgotten to write down the co-ordinates. Duh!!! You
cannot write anything into your family history without being able to prove it.
It’s just not scientific and will mean nothing to future generations.
Always try and get a copy of the document you need - that means every death notice, baptism, marriage and burial relating to your family that you can lay your hands on. This is the best proof of authenticity that you will get. A photocopy, a digital photograph, even a hand written copy will do. Then…most important!!!! Make sure that you write down the place or repository where you found the document and where within that place the document is filed.
Using our example of the Death Notice for Jasper Antonie
Ley above, you would note down KAB MOOC 6/9/159 reference no: 4180 LEY, Jasper
Antonie 1877 Cape Town Archives. You should also note the date that you accessed
this document. All these details should be written
onto any hard copies you make so that at a glance you know what’s going on.
Remember:
SUMMARY